The successive technological advances applied to the motor vehicle increase the control options of an increasing number of settings for the driver of the vehicle, or even its other occupants. Now, the possibility of monitoring or controlling a function or a group of functions generally involves display of their instantaneous state. This constant and large increase in the modulation options offered to users also reflects progressively advanced automation of vehicles and an increased convenience requirement. It simultaneously leads to a space management and treatment problem, in particular to locate and judiciously use the control, selection and adjustment organs, display screens, etc.
The locations useable and already used to embed the said organs are at the level or the steering-wheel, in the spaces between the seats of the driver and the front passenger, at the door armrests, under the steering wheel and, of course, on the dashboard.
However, with the number of possibilities for control/selection/display continuing to increase, it is not only a question of finding new spaces in which to located them, but also of attempting to gather them together in groups, or even increase their density in the places already used, without thereby damaging their operational ergonomics.
A solution currently employed to improve compactness of the control/monitoring zones resides in the use of screens, the image conveying an unequalled density of information. However, even under this hypothesis, it is scarcely possible any longer to have recourse to the type of solution which has been prevalent up to now, namely introducing more and more monitoring screens into motor vehicles, each dedicated to a group of particular functions (air-conditioning, navigation, audio or telephony system, etc.). Not only does the user then have, certainly unconsciously, to simultaneously select within the passenger space of his vehicle the functions to be activated and the location of the corresponding control organs, the increase in the number of the screens brings back the initial problem.